DOVER, Del. -- The Coca-Cola 600 was a disaster, and they came to Dover International Speedway a distant 19th in points. Having seen enough, the car owner made a crew chief change in an effort to reverse the fortunes of his high-profile, big-sponsor, championship-caliber program.

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Dale Earnhardt Jr. in 2009? Try Greg Biffle in 2007. Not NASCAR's most popular driver, of course, but still a competitor expected to win races and contend for titles, and still someone from whom mediocrity is judged to be unacceptable. But two years ago, mediocre was exactly what the No. 16 team was. And into this environment walked Greg Erwin, a new crew chief hired by Jack Roush away from Robby Gordon's organization, and almost single-handedly tasked with turning Biffle's lackluster season around.

"It was a bit of an uneasy feeling," Erwin recalled this week at Dover, where he first joined the No. 16 team two years ago. "The biggest part of it was just knowing what a history there was here with Greg -- and I can go further and say Matt [Kenseth] and Carl [Edwards], and all the success those guys have had -- so you knew the tools were there. You knew the tools were in the building to get the job done. Finding the tools was kind of the hard part."

When car owners make a crew chief change, the replacements come from a variety of different areas. Some, like Erwin, come from another team. Some, like Steve Letarte, who succeeded Robbie Loomis on Jeff Gordon's pit box late in the 2005 season, come from inside the same program. And some, like Lance McGrew, who will replace the reassigned Tony Eury Jr. as Earnhardt's crew chief on an interim basis beginning next weekend at Pocono Raceway, come from elsewhere within the wider organization. But regardless of their origination point, they all have one thing in common: pressure.

Everyone involved with a struggling program is looking to the new guy to create change, to lift spirits, to make a difference -- sometimes, immediately. In that vein, McGrew's situation next week is no different than Erwin's two years ago or Letarte's in 2005. They're the designated savior. Everyone is looking to them to turn things around. If it doesn't happen, then the car owner will likely go through the same process, and find someone else to walk into the same intimidating, uncompromising situation.

"Without a doubt, when you take over for a driver or any team that is successful and has a great resume, you know what you have coming in," Letarte said. "You know you're the new guy, and you're going to be under the microscope more than the team or the driver. There's a lot of pressure there."

McGrew's situation is somewhat unique, given that car owner Rick Hendrick has also dedicated a general manager and a chassis engineer to help him reverse the fortunes of the No. 88 team. But he's still the crew chief, and he'll be the one to receive the accolades or the blame depending on how Earnhardt runs the rest of the year. It's still his name on the line. Gordon saw Letarte go through a similar process four years ago, and knows just how intense it can be.

"From the outside, there is certainly a lot more attention from the media and the fans and pressure from that sense. A lot of times you've got to block that out, because the pressure within is already intense enough," he said. "And from that standpoint, it's no different no matter what your name is or what you've accomplished on the track or how popular or not popular you are. When you're trying to make changes and you know you're with a top organization and your teammates are running good, and I have been there, those pressures and that intensity and those decisions are as high for anybody in that situation. But when you throw in the outside criticism under the microscope then yes, that does intensify it."

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The biggest thing was, man, we had no fear to be honest. So after a race, it was very easy for him to say, 'When you asked me this or asked me that, if you were to have worded it this way or that way, that really would have helped me out.'

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STEVE LETARTE

Every situation is different. When Letarte succeeded Loomis after Gordon missed the 2005 Chase, he had 10 races to prepare for the next season. He had an intern record radio transmissions in each of those events, and he would watch a replay of the race, read the transcriptions, and familiarize himself with the language Gordon used to describe how his car was handling and what it needed. The process helped Gordon and Letarte reach a comfort level in their communication relatively quickly.

"The biggest thing was, man, we had no fear to be honest," Letarte said. "So after a race, it was very easy for him to say, 'When you asked me this or asked me that, if you were to have worded it this way or that way, that really would have helped me out.' I would take our transcript after the race and say, 'You were describing the car here, and I was just confused. I didn't know what you meant. If it had been more this direction or this direction, it would have made more sense.' We were real honest with one another critiquing our performance."

By the time they reached Daytona to open the following season, they were ready. Gordon won twice that year and finished sixth in final points. "To try to go to Daytona and make it happen first thing in 2006 would have definitely been much more stressful," Letarte said. "I learned a lot in those first 10 weeks. I had 10 weekends of practice."

Erwin had no such luxury when he joined Biffle's team a third of the way through the 2007 season. Before officially succeeding Pat Tryson, Erwin attended the Coca-Cola 600 just to observe. He saw Biffle blow a tire, hit the wall, and finish last. "I walked in and they said, 'Here's a radio, here's a stopwatch, here's Greg Biffle. Have at it.' It was hard," he said. "Just the overall size of the organization, the number of drivers involved, the number of crew chiefs and engineers, getting your hands wrapped around a completely new group of guys. I really didn't know anyone. It wasn't intimidating, but it was a tall order."

It was also something of a reclamation project, given that the team needed more organization, the pit crew needed fine-tuning, and the Roush organization as a whole was slow to adapt to the new Sprint Cup car. The kind of communication Biffle wanted was completely opposite from what Erwin had been used to with his previous driver. And because he took over midseason, he was expected to try to get the No. 16 team into the Chase, just as McGrew is tasked with doing with Earnhardt today. To do that, Erwin not only needed to set up two kinds of cars to his driver's specifications -- NASCAR was phasing in the new chassis at the time -- but he also had to learn what Biffle wanted during a race.

"You've got to figure out his sensitivities to adjustments, air pressure, wedge, how he gets in and off pit road, where he needs a little pick me up sometimes, where he needs to get told to settle down a little bit," Erwin said. "There was that side, the real crew chief side of the game, that I was not prepared for, either. It was a hard year."

Ultimately, they missed the Chase, finishing 14th. But looking back on it now, Biffle remembers how positive that situation felt. The No. 16 team has made the Chase the past two seasons, and is back in contention again this year.

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"I think you're in the best-case scenario when somebody steps in like Erwin or somebody for Junior, because really the only way to go is up. That's a good thing," Biffle said. "When you take the reins of something, the graph is going to naturally be up, so that's a good thing. The other thing is, it gets the whole team excited and it gets the driver excited. It's like you see somebody qualify on the pole and then they run good. It's momentum, and that's what a new crew chief does -- it's instant momentum ... because of the camaraderie around a new crew chief and a new program and all that. A lot of times you see a bump in performance, even when we swap crew chiefs and teams. It's that energy level that always gives a team a little bump, so I think you'll see [Earnhardt] pick up a little bit. The whole team is going to be working hard to come up with results, and I think you'll see a little bump in performance."

That natural lift, the buoyancy that comes with a new crew chief sharing new ideas, may help Earnhardt more than anything else. Still, there are no guarantees -- from his perspective, Erwin believes that vaunted momentum bump is more myth than reality, and doesn't set in for good until performance begins to turn around. But from the driver's perspective, a little fresh perspective can be everything.

"Sometimes it's not the players as much as it is the change. Sometimes change is what people need," Letarte said.

"You get to a certain point where in order for things to get better, you have to make a change, and it sort of puts everybody on edge," added Mark Martin, who's been through his share of crew chief changes. "Everybody does more. I think Junior will do more because of this change, and he'll be more tolerant of situations because it's a growing pain rather than something that has been festering and getting sore. I think that will be good for the whole team."

For the sake of the new crew chief, you can only hope so.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.